


All due to magical shenanigans

by honestbanjo



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Back to the Future References, Depression, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-21 18:17:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8255606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honestbanjo/pseuds/honestbanjo
Summary: AU - Back to the future day was coming up and Emma, being a big fan of the franchise, decided to celebrate it by having a movie-marathon. But staying up late watching all three movies and some silly videos on youtube had an effect she didn't quite expect. Rated T for language.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a silly draft I had sitting in my computer for some time. I started writing this based on a dream I had last year, so, please ignore the screwed up timeline of events. Let's just assume Emma was born in 1988 instead of 1983. This story is set in 2002/2015.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own OUAT or anything...

"WHAT THE FUCK?! WHY DID I SET THAT FUCKING ALARM CLOCK YESTERDAY? FUCK!" she screamed at herself mentally while the annoying beeps of the alarm clock went off. Waking up hungover was already bad enough; she certainly did not need to anticipate that event with the help of such an annoying machine. She fumbled with the sheets trying to find her phone to turn the damn thing off but all she found was a body pressed to hers.

"Hey" she nudged the body next to herself. "Turn that shit off, please," she asked the person. But that didn't happen. All the happened was a very agitated movement that indicated that someone had gotten up from the bed.  
It looked like she was going to have to open her eyes and turn the alarm off herself. That got her in an even worse mood.

"Damn, would it cost you so much to cooperate with me once in a while?" she asked, sitting on the mattress and patting the sheets trying to find her phone. Then she noticed. Why was the room so bright? How could it be so hot if they had gone to sleep with an average temperature of 62ºF? She decided to open her eyes properly and they could not believe what she was seeing.

She instantly recognized the room she was in. It was her old bedroom. She had slept in that bedroom during a few of her teenage years. But what was she doing there? On the corner of her eye, she saw someone moving. When she looked to the left, she not only saw her old posters hanging on the wall near the old computer, but there was her old self. Her 13-year-old self. And she was looking dumbfounded at her.

Neither of them said anything. They just kept looking at each other with their mouths hanging open while looking for the right words to say, or even the right thoughts to think. The alarm clock, which had apparently been put in snooze mood went off again. She looked down to the space next to her legs and saw that it was an old alarm clock going off and not her cellphone, like she had previously thought. "It's been ages since I saw one of these." She thought to herself while grabbing the object and turning it off permanently. Why had she set up an alarm clock to wake her up at 5 a.m.? Another mystery to be solved. After doing it, she put the clock down on the mattress again.

"Why are you here?" she heard and looked up. Her teenage-self asked had spoken to her.

"What do you mean, why am I here?" she asked stupidly. She didn't understand the question, but, mainly, she couldn't answer it.

"Are you me?" was she?

"I don't know. I'm me. I'm Emma" she answered.

"I'm Emma." The other person in the room said as well.

"Huh" was all she could muster. What conclusions should she be getting out of that conversation? As it wasn't already confusing enough, being hungover wasn't helping at all. "What's your last name?"

"Swan." The teenager answered her. "What's yours?"

"Swan…" she said in a low, disbelieving voice. "How old are you?"

"I'm thirteen years old." There it was!

"Ha! I'm twenty-eight. We just share names, that's all…" she said, trying more to convince herself than the teenager.

"But how come you look exactly like me? And why are you naked?" the teen asked her and she looked down at her body.

"Shit!" she cursed and hurried to press the sheets against her bare chest, but before she could do that, she took a glance on her breasts. They were significantly smaller than she remembered. Actually, they were just like she remembered them from when she was thirteen years old… oh boy, her headache was getting worse by the second.

"Shit… I really shouldn't have tried waking up so early… no internet time is worth this weird nightmare…" she heard the teenager mumbling to herself.

Nightmare? Yes, that was the only feasible answer to all that was going on.

"Would you say this is an inception nightmare?" she decided to ask the younger girl.

"An what-nightmare?" the girl had no clue.

"Inception" she repeated.

"And it doesn't stop getting weirder…" the teenager started moving towards the bed.

"Hey, would you stop being so sarcastic? Who do you think you are?" when she realized the teen girl was moving to lie down on the bed where she was currently sitting, she got alarmed. "What are you doing?"

"You're a weird nightmare and I'm not enjoying this anymore. I'm going back to sleep until I have to get up for school." The girl put a pillow over her head after lying down and turned to face the wall. "Be gone when I wake up again. Bye." The girl said from under the pillow.

She couldn't believe it. Had she been ignored by her teenage-self? This couldn't be happening. She would deal with this situation immediately. She got up from the bed and was ready to start discussing with the teenager when she lost her hold on the sheets and realized she still was butt-naked.

"Some decency first." She said to herself. Then, she walked to the wardrobe and opened it. She could see all her old clothes hanging there, including her old school uniform. She kind of felt bad about wearing someone else's clothes, but with everything that was happening, she pushed those thoughts aside and started moving the hangers and going through the drawers trying to find a pair of comfortable shorts and a t-shirt, not bothering to look for a set of underwear. She didn't know which was worse, to be bare-skinned inside someone's clothes or wearing their panties, but since that was probably a really freakish dream, she figured there would be no problem going commando for a few minutes.

After she found the items she remembered as being her favorites, she put them on and went to the bed again to try and wake the teenager so they could talk.

Emma approached the bed and shook the teenager's shoulder. "Hey."

"Fuck off…" she heard the girl mumbling.

She sighed and decided to just let the girl sleep. She knew that type of person all too well because she was like that when she wanted to sleep. There was nothing anyone could do to make a person like that get up in the mood to talk. So, what was she going to do until the moody teen decided to wake up again?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like there was a lack of information that would be important to this story. So here's the context: Emma's parents are Mary Margaret and David Swan. Little Neal is actually only a few years younger than teenage Emma in this story, but he probably won't participate much. That being said, I hope things make more sense now.

She started looking around the room and decided to revel in the nostalgic feeling it was bringing to her. She approached the wall where her old posters were hanging and took a close look on them. They were still intact, so she figured she was dreaming about some moment before that one day when she got so mad after a fight with her mother that she pretty much thrashed the entire bedroom. If she could go back to that moment, she would not do those things, because she really cherished those posters and looking at their shreds, years later, only reminded her of the emotional disarray she felt that day.

Looking a little to the right she saw her old desktop computer. Well, not hers, but the household’s.

“Things were tough back in the day…” she thought to herself, remembering that was the only computer for everyone in the house to use. She was glad she didn’t have to go through that anymore, since now she had her own laptop.

She spotted a backpack on the floor next to the desk where the computer was. It was her current backpack.

“What’s this doing here?” She thought while opening the zippers. “I thought this dream was based on the early 2000’s…” she continued and started rummaging through the contents of the school item. Inside she found her laptop, cellphone, paperwork she had brought home from the station, unfinished reports, everything. Those items did not match the rest of the dream. Even the date on her phone was the correct date, October 21st, 2015. How could it be? She put everything back inside the backpack and went to sit on the desk to use the computer.

“Might as well play some of my old games while I’m here” she decided and turned the machine on. She waited for a long time until she saw the Windows Millenium logo appear on the screen. “Gosh, this is gonna take forever…” she complained to herself. When the system finally finished booting, the heard the unmistakable sound of the software coming to life.

She decided to check out the desktop area to see if she could find the GameBoy emulator program so she could play Pokémon Blue. She took a glance at the date on the corner of the screen and it read March 12th, 2002. Weird… “How can my phone say it’s 2015 and this thing here say it’s 2002?” she wondered. She looked for the emulator program one more time and when she couldn’t find it, she had an idea.

If it was really 2002, then the website for the Digimon web-magazine she used to access would be online. This was going to answer her questions. She didn’t even bother to look for the Google Chrome browser icon; she was using fricking Windows Millenium after all, so she went for the Internet Explorer icon and double clicked it. When the browser showed her the address bar, she typed in the web-address, clicked Enter and waited for the page to be loaded, but instead, she was met with an Error page due to lack of internet connection.

“Right! I have set up the Dial-Up connection manually… I had totally forgotten about it!” she thought amusing herself and proceeded to look for the dialer program. When she found it, she was glad to see that the username and password were already there, because she surely did not remember that information. She clicked on the “Connect” button and waited for it.

The machine started making the connection sounds and then she felt a pillow hitting her head from behind.

“Damn it! I thought I hadn’t turned that thing on yet-“ the young girl started making her way to the desk when she noticed Emma was sitting in front of it. “Oh, you’re still here.” She added.

“Unfortunately, I can’t wake up, so, yes.” Emma responded.

“Well, you can’t make so much noise while connecting to the internet. Do you want to wake everyone up?” the teenager said and started going back to bed.”

“Oh no, since you’re up on your own, we’re gonna talk.” Emma rushed and sat on the bed before the teenager could reach it and lay back down.

The teenager looked pissed but she decided it was best if she could solve that problem once and for all. She sat on the chair next to the desk and looked at the other person that was wearing her clothes.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Emma asked the teenager.

“Look, I’m convinced I’m still trapped inside my nightmare with you-me, I don’t know, but I also don’t care. You’re inside my head and I just want this to be over. Besides, you’re the one who wanted to talk, so, talk.” The teen said seeming not affected by that situation anymore.

“What day is today?” she asked.

“I don’t know, check on the computer.” Her younger version answered looking bored.

“It says today is March 12th, 2002.” Emma stated.

“Then it must be” the teenager finished.

“But my phone says it’s October 21st, 2015” she said retrieving her phone from the backpack front pocket. And pressing the lock button so the screen could light up and show the letters representing date and time in front of someone’s picture.

“That’s a phone?” the teenager laughed skeptically.

“Yeah, what’s the matter?” Emma did not understand the skepticism. If they were the same person, how could the teen not know that was her cellphone?

“That’s a luminous brick.” The girl said matter-of-factly.

“What?!?” Emma was taken aback by the statement.

“Where are the buttons?” the girl asked.

“Um… here?” she turned the phone to the side and pointed to the lock and volume buttons.

“I mean the number keys. How do you call someone without the number keys?” the teenager insisted.

“Ok, if you’re me, how can you not know how to make a call with this?” Emma asked frustrated waving the brick-like object in her hand.

“Wait a second, I’m not you. You’re me. And I know about technology. You can’t call someone on a cellphone unless you press the number keys or the arrows and stuff if you look up their names from you contact list.” It looked like the teenager wasn’t going to give up.

“For your information, with this cellphone, you can. That’s why we’re in 2015 and you’re me, not the other way around.” Emma said opening the caller app and showing the number keys on the screen.

The young girl was astonished when she saw the other girl doing things to the luminous brick just by touching its screen. She had only seen gadgets like those in sci-fi movies and cartoons, but never in real life, she didn’t even know companies were developing electronic devices like those at the time.

“You’ve never seen this? Really?” Emma asked the teen.

“No, I swear! I only saw those in cartoons and some movies” she started reaching for the object. “Can I see it?”

“No!” Emma withdrew her hand. The gears were turning inside her mind and if she was correct, she was in a very messy situation.

“Why not? Come on, let me see it! Man, this is better than a digivice!” The young girl tried to reach for the device one more time, just to have her hand slapped by her older self.

“Stop it. And this is not better than a digivice, trust me.” Emma replied.

“I bet you don’t even know what a digivice is….” The teenager “humph’ed.

“Look, I know what a digivice is, okay? I think I have an idea of what’s going on here.” Emma said. “We have the same names, the same bodies, we know the same stuff – kind of – and that’s because we’re the same person.” She finished.

“Hmm...” The teenager did not seem to have a hard time accepting the news.

“You seem okay with this” Emma observed.

“How did you expect me to react? I’ve dreamt of weirder stuff before…” the young girl answered unfazed.

“Oh.My.God! Can you stop being a smart-ass for like, five seconds? I’m trying to solve a real problem here.” Emma said, getting frustrated. “God! Why was I so arrogant?” She thought to herself. “Ok, here’s the thing, I’m actually a twenty-seven-year-old woman trapped in her teenage body.” Emma said, felling exasperated.

“What’s the problem with that? Are you saying you don’t like my-our body?” the teen looked offended.

“No, it’s not that." Emma ran her hand through her face. This was going to be tough. "It’s a good body I think" she continued "It’s just that I’m not like this anymore! This is really weird for me, not having my boobs, my hair, my teeth… oh my God! My teeth!” Emma ran her tongue through her teeth and sighed sadly. “I suffered so much with braces to put them, minimally, in place and now I have them like this again…” she said disappointed.

“You said boobs?!” the teenager asked excited.

“Yeah, our boobs are bigger.” Emma answered, not really understanding all the excitement.

“Did you put breast implants?” the teen continued.

“No. They’re natural.”

“You mean someday I’m gonna have real big boobs???” the teen looked like she was going to burst out in happiness.

“Well, they’re not gonna be so big but they’ll be real, that’s for sure. And you’re gonna be happy about their size. Anyway, this won’t be an issue for you anymore.” Emma assured her younger self.

“Wait-“ the teenager remembered suddenly “I saw a picture on your phone when you turned it on to show me the date. Was that you-us on the picture?”

“Yes, it’s me.” Emma responded.

“Wow, when do I become so self-conscious? I mean, who puts their own picture to display on their phone? Do I get that much futile when I grow older?” the teen wondered.

“Hey, it wasn’t me who put that picture as the phone wallpaper. I’m not that shallow…” Emma defended herself.

“Then who did?”

“My wi-“ Emma started answering but then stopped herself from saying more. Revealing this kind of information could alter future events and mess everything up even more.

“Were you going to say ‘wife’? YOU HAVE A WIFE? I’M GAY???” the younger girl started panicking.  
Emma had to think quickly to get herself out of a conversation she knew she shouldn’t have at the moment.

“No, no, I was going to say Wyatt, my son. He loves to mess with my phone and put random pics of myself as wallpaper because he says I’m the most beautiful woman in the whole world bla bla bla…” Emma said, really hoping the teen would believer her. Not that her son was named Wyatt, she didn’t even know anyone Wyatt, but that was all that came up in the short time she had to formulate an excuse.

“So I’m not gay? Thank God! Because, you know, ew! Never in my life I’d be with a woman…” the teenager started rambling.  
Emma looked at her and laughed sadly. If only she knew… her thoughts were interrupted by the continuous rant from the other girl.

“… and I have a son who thinks I’m the most beautiful woman in the world? OHMYGOD! How cute is that? Is he beautiful? Does he look like us or his father? Wait, who is his father? Do I know him yet? What’s he like?” it seemed like the girl would never stop talking and asking questions. This was going too far. Emma was starting to regret having that kind of conversation before thinking things through.

“Hey, how about you go back to sleep like you wanted and I’ll just be here on the computer, you know, quiet. This way everybody’s happy. What do you say?” she asked, hoping the teen would take the bait.

The teen yawned and answered “You’re probably right. I can get all the answers I need laying down with my eyes closed, since sleeping is what I’m already doing…”. She went back to bed and got under the covers, putting the pillow over her head again.

Emma sighed heavily. This wasn’t a dream. If it were, she would’ve already woken up. She never let her dreams get this weird. She went back to the computer to try and look up some information that would help her understand what the hell was going on. But what was she going to type on the search bar? Did Google exist yet? Would she be able to find something related to magic? Because that was the most reasonable cause to explain how she got herself in that situation. She rested her head in her hands and massaged her temples. What was she going to do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About the digimon references, well, I'm a fan.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both Emmas try to come up with a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I don't own anything related to OUAT or any other shows mentioned in this story.

After some thinking and no new ideas coming to her mind, Emma decided to take a break and just browse through the internet to relax. She finally visited the website for the Digimon web-magazine she had previously thought about.

When doing so, she found some songs she remembered she really liked but could never find them again once the website was deleted.

“I should just download this to my phone so I won’t have to go years without it again” she thought. She scrambled through her backpack to retrieve her phone and usb cable. Once she had them in hand, she started looking for the USB port on the tower case, but she couldn’t find any. She looked on the back of the object to see if there was one for the mouse or keyboard but all she found were round shaped ports and whatnots. Then it hit her. It was an old desktop computer and the only way she could transfer something in or out of it was through a diskette. She looked to her left and she saw a bunch of diskettes sitting on top of the desk.

“What the hell am I gonna do with a diskette when I go back?” she groaned and slouched back in the chair.

She put the USB cable aside and unlocked her phone “Maybe I’ll just see what’s going on back in the future” she thought, turning the WiFi function on before opening the Fecebook app. She waited a few seconds for the phone to show her the connection options but nothing happened. When she touched the screen until she was seeing the WiFi setting, she couldn’t find any connection available.

“Right, we still didn’t have wireless connection at home in 2002. Damn, I’ll have to use mobile data.” But when she did try to turn on the mobile data function, she found out that it wasn’t working either “Damn, of course my phone won’t work at all, since it has a simcard and in 2002 they didn’t have that yet. This is useless.” She said, angrily tossing the phone on the desk.

She got up from the chair and started wandering around the bedroom. She found her old pile of magazines and decided to spend some time reading them until the teenager woke up again and they could figure out a solution together.

She didn’t realize how much time had passed and she was almost falling asleep again until a knock on the door startled her.

“Emma, get up! We have to leave soon!” she heard a female voice on the other side of the door. Her mother?

The teenager on the bed let out a loud groan but got up and started heading towards the wardrobe. She fumbled through some clothing items and pulled out her favorite pair of jeans and a simple blue t-shirt. When she was about to start undressing herself to change from PJs to her daily outfit, she stopped noticing the other person in the room looking at her.

“Shit! You scared me! How can you still be here? Am I not awake yet?” young Emma asked as she started pinching herself.

Emma kept looking at the her, trying to make some sense out of the entire situation.

“I told you, I’m not a fucking dream. Now can we start thinking about how are we gonna solve this problem so I can go back to my life? She said, her frustration only rising.

“Hmm, ok. So this is real somehow… anyway I can’t help you right now, I gotta go to school.” The teen said.

“Screw school. Don’t you think this is more urgent?” Emma asked her.

“I can’t simply skip school today. I’ve got a big math test and, as you must know, I haven’t been doing so well in this subject since, well, ever.” Young Emma started telling her olderself, but then, she had an idea. “I know! Maybe you can go to school instead of me! If you really are from the future, then you probably already finished high school and college and all that shit and you must’ve learned this crap from today’s test.” The teenager suggested.

“No way. As you said, I’ve been there once and I remember how much I hated that place. I’m not going back.” Older Emma stated simply.

“Aww, come on! If you help me now, maybe we can get better grades and do better stuff with my-our future. Don’t you want that?” the teenager tried to convince Emma.

Emma thought for a second. Maybe if she had graduated with better grades, she could’ve have a better job and make more money in the future. She definitely wanted that. And besides, she had learned trigonometry a little bit better after eighth grade. She could help herself with this, literally.

“Okay, I’ll go, but you gotta vanish for a few hours. We can’t let people know there’s two of us here.” Older Emma said.

“No problem.” The teen said, handing Emma the clothes she was going to change into.

Emma started undressing herself and the teen looked away blushing.

 “What are you doing?” Emma asked.

“Uhh, giving you some privacy.” The teenager answered awkwardly.

“But it’s the same body you have. You don’t need to be ashamed of looking. I don’t mind it.” Emma said, trying to ease the tension in the room, but the teen’s reaction was complete opposite of what Emma intended.

“Do I turn into some kind of exhibitionist in the future?!?” younger Emma was getting agitated.

“No, listen, what I meant was-“ Emma tried to explain but she was cut off by the teen.

“I DON’T LIKE TO LOOK AT WOMEN’S NAKED BODIES! I’M NOT GAY, OKAY???” the teen finally said, panting hard.

“Shhhh! Stop screaming! People are gonna think you’re talking to someone here and that’s what we’re trying to avoid!” Emma warned.

Mary Margaret knocked on the door after the loud words “Emma, sweetie, what’s going on in there? Are you okay?”

Teenage Emma was still panting hard and older Emma decided to answer her mother.

“Yeah, mom, everything’s fine. I’ll be right out.” She said.

She finished dressing up and turned to her younger version who had sat down on the bed to calm herself down.

“Look” older Emma started “I get why you feel like this. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I want you to know that it is okay.” She told the teenager who was looking at her with an angry pout. “The sooner you understand and accept yourself, the less you’ll suffer.” She finished.

“I’m not gay, I already told you. I don’t know why you’re insisting I am.” The teen said.

“I’m talking about much bigger stuff, but, like I said, we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t feel like it. Now I’m gonna finish getting ready or mom will enter this room and then we’ll have a real problem do deal with right now.” Emma said grabbing her backpack and putting her laptop and paperwork into the teenager’s backpack along the teen’s notebook.

“Why don’t you leave your stuff here? People are going to get suspicious if they see a laptop like yours at school.” Young Emma asked.

“I know how curious we are and if I leave my stuff here I’ll be risking you taking a look at them and discovering more stuff about your future. I don’t know how much that would affect MY future, so I’ll just take my stuff with me and hide my junk in my locker until the end of the day.” Emma said as she put one strap of the backpack on her shoulder and headed to the door.

“Wait, just one more thing. How are we gonna come back home?” the teen asked her.

“Hmmm” she thought for a second “Meet me at the mall by 4 and we’ll see from there” Emma said, finally leaving the room and heading towards the kitchen.

When she got there, Mary Margaret, David and Neal were already at the table finishing their breakfasts. Emma went to sit down, but her mother rushed her.

“What took you so long? Now you won’t have time to eat your breakfast.” Her mother said to her.

“It’s okay, I’ll just have coffee anyway.” Emma said moving to grab the coffee pot.

“Since when do you drink coffee, Em?” her younger brother asked, looking up from his bowl of fruit loops.

She let go of the coffee pot and moved to get the bottle of orange juice. “If snitches and bitches were wine and beer, we’d all have a Happy New Year…” she mumbled to herself in a low tone but not so low that it wasn’t heard.

“Emma!” her father scolded her putting his newspaper down on the table. “Don’t use this kind of language in front of your brother or anyone at all!”

“Dad, what is a bitch?” Neal asked his father since he was too young to understand the meaning of that word.

Emma humph’ed and rolled her eyes.

“Why are you in such a bad mood this morning? I head yelling from your bedroom. Did you go to bed late again and had fewer hours of sleep? I think I’m going to have to remove the computer from your bedroom, since you’re spending too much time doing God-knows-what instead of studying or having enough hours of sleep.” Her mother said frustrated.

Emma knew better than to keep on acting like that. She remembered what lashing out at her parents used to get her. But now she was 27 and she could think a little better.

“I’m sorry dad, Neal, mom. You’re right. I’m just tired, but you don’t need to take the computer away. I promise I will manage my time with it better.” She said looking at all three of them.

“It’s okay, honey, we just don’t want you to fall behind in your grades. You’re already not doing so well, especially in math.” Mary Margaret said forgivingly.

“Ok, I’ll try to do better. Now can we go? Neal has finished his breakfast already. I don’t want to be late for school.” Emma said, for the first time, anxious to get to school just so she could get away from her family. Remembering how to be a teenager, but not being such an obnoxious one was hard.

“Of course, I’m just going to get my purse.” Her mother answered. “David, you clean this up, right?” she asked her husband, who was finishing his cup of coffee.

“Sure thing, sweetheart” he said and started moving the dishes from the table to the sink.

Mary Margaret and Neal left the kitchen to go get their belongings and Emma went to the front door.

“I hope my day at school goes better than this” she thought to herself and she waited for her mother and brother. “Now, where are Emma’s notes on Trig? I need to remember some stuff before the test…” she started looking through young Emma’s notebook, trying to find notes on Trigonometry and trying to make sense of the sine function and whatever else she knew it would be on that test.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From now on, I'm going to refer to younger Emma as Em. I think this way it'll be easier for all of us.


End file.
